Arriving after a twisting journey and discovering she had died Brian is shattered. After a mourning period while living and working in an underground city, they team up with John’s new lady friend, Atlantic, and her son, to trek into the high mountains and join a clan they had met earlier; a clan that was digging for gold in the changing mountains and had established an alternate living style.

Brian carries his baggage of depression. He has met a younger woman, Carrie, who loves him, her father, Springer, October who becomes another close friend, and a clan of fascinating personalities. Challenges and changes, life and death, are thrown at the clan like gunshots. To endure, they must all battle the torturous natural elements, marauders, contend with the internal upwelling of emotions, and balance them all into a civility within their extended family.